For the past four decades the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Japan, Australia, and other developed nations have adopted sweeping environmental protection regulations to address the state of their air, water, soil and other natural resources, to protect human life and to protect and preserve the natural environment. The imposition of environmental regulations on business, while having a steep price, has had the beneficial effect of reversing two centuries of the harmful effects of the Industrial Revolution. And yet, despite all the progress, the work of protecting and preserving the Earth is never ending. As the Industrial Revolution spreads to developed nations, there is ever more “environment work” to be addressed.

The original movement to protect the Earth and its inhabitants in more recent times was the Conservation Movement, stretching back to the 1800s; then more recently came the Environmental Movement; and now we see the emerging global Sustainability Movement. This section of Accountability Central is devoted to topics environmental, including news, research and insights, commentary and opinion, and more.

Early this year, Norway put its toe in the global movement to drop investments in fossil fuel companies. Its sovereign wealth fund (the Fund), at $850 billion the world's largest, divested from 14 coal mining companies, five...

The Dutch government apologized on Monday for ignoring risks posed by earthquakes caused by production of natural gas in the northern province of Groningen. The apology follows a Feb. 18 report by the country's independent Safety...

Research & Insights

Human-caused climate change is increasing drought risk in California -- boosting the odds that our current crisis will become a fixture of the future, according to a major report Stanford scientists released Monday morning.

In the case of Antarctica, the climate models were dead wrong, according to a new study by Chinese scientists published in the journal Cryosphere. The study found that most climate models predicted Antarctic sea ice coverage...

A report from the National Academy of Sciences concluded that experiments in blotting out the sun in order to reduce the amount of the sun’s rays that hit the Earth would be too risky. Spraying aerosols into the atmosphere – one...

Commentary & Opinion

WesternJournalism - At a press conference in Brussels last month, the UN climate chief delineated the objectives of the îIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Changeî (IPCC) and the United Nations. She revealed:...

“VIRTUE,” according to George Bernard Shaw, “is insufficient temptation.” But new research on the consumption patterns of the environmentally minded suggests that virtue and self-indulgence often go hand-in-hand.